Though weak and ill, and for two nights without a moment’s sleep, I felt no fatigue, but mechanically followed by the side of the litter as though in a dream. The same wild country diversified with marsh and forest! Again we halted. The night came, and I sat by her side in a miserable hut, with the feeble lamp flickering while she lay as in death. She had never moved a muscle since she fell. My people slept. I was alone, and no sound broke the stillness of the night. The ears ached at the utter silence, till the sudden wild cry of a hyena made me shudder as the horrible thought rushed through my brain that, should she be buried in this lonely spot, the hyena–would disturb her rest.
The morning was not far distant; it was past four o’clock. I had passed the night in replacing wet cloths upon her head and moistening her lips, as she lay apparently lifeless on her litter. I could do nothing more; in solitude and abject misery in that dark hour, in a country of savage heathen, thousands of miles away from a Christian land, I beseeched an aid above all human, trusting alone to Him.
The morning broke; my lamp had just burned out, and cramped with the night’s watching I rose from my low seat and seeing that she lay in the same unaltered state I went to the door of the hut to breathe one gasp of the fresh morning air. I was watching the first red streak that heralded the rising sun, when I was startled by the words, “Thank God,” faintly uttered behind me. Suddenly she had awoke from her torpor, and with a heart overflowing I went to her bedside. Her eyes were full of madness! She spoke, but the brain was gone!